Mark Vande Hei, who broke the record for the longest spaceflight by an American astronaut, returned safely to Earth. Vande Hei flew to the International Space Station on April 9 last year and spent 355 days in orbit, beating Scott Kelly’s record of 340 days outside our planet’s atmosphere. Having completed his second space flight, Vande Hei spent a total of 523 days in space.
American astronaut made the return journey to Earth with Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov in the Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft. There were fears that Roscosmos would leave Vande Hei stranded in space following the sanctions imposed on Russia following the US invasion of Ukraine. If these concerns were to become reality, NASA would have to rely on private companies like SpaceX to bring the astronaut back.
Russian space agency Roscosmos has issued a statement reassuring it will bring Vande Hei back home, stating that the agency has “no reason to doubt its credibility as a partner”.
Three passengers closed the lid of the Soyuz spacecraft at 11:30 PM EDT on March 29. It began landing at 02:45 on March 30 and landed in Kazakhstan at 07:28 (5:28 local time). At the ISS, Vande Hei contributed to dozens of studies conducted, including six studies organized by NASA’s Human Research Program.
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